The invention relates to methods for synthesizing compounds for the selective modification of nucleic acids in biological compositions.
The transmission of viral diseases (e.g., hepatitis A, B, and C, acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, and cytomegalovirus infections) by blood or blood products is a significant problem in medicine. Other biological compositions, such as mammalian and hybridoma cell lines, products of cell lines, milk, colostrum, and sperm, can also contain infectious viruses. Screening donor biological compositions for viral markers can help reduce the transmission of viruses to recipients, but many screening methods are directed to only a few discrete viruses, and are therefore incomplete, and may also be less than 100% sensitive. It is therefore important to inactivate viruses contained in donor blood, blood products, or other biological compositions.
A number of agents that are capable of inactivating viruses in blood have been developed. For example, ethyleneimine monomer and ethyleneimine oligomers (including dimers, trimers, and tetramers) are very effective viral inactivating agents. Methods for using ethyleneimine oligomers for inactivating viruses in biological compositions are described in U.S. Ser. No. 09/005,606 (filed Jan. 12, 1998), hereby incorporated by reference.